Through GreenTinted Glasses
by Miri Penn
Summary: My first fanfic! A series of vignettes from the point of view of Octavia, from her childhood through to the end of Mockingjay, and maybe beyond.
1. Chapter 1

"Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art." _Ralph Waldo Emerson_

**Octavia aged 9**

I wish I was skinny. Today in school Horatio followed me around the playground chanting "waddle, waddle, waddle!" at me everywhere I went. All the boys were laughing. It's not fair.

Julei can eat and eat and eat and she's still skinny. When she comes to my house our favourite thing is to get an enormous mug of hot chocolate each, full of cream and sugar. Then we get some of those chocolate feathers, you know, the ones that come in different colours and flavours: orange are orange chocolate, red are chilli chocolate, pink are raspberry chocolate - my favourites are the cream coloured ones, they're vanilla chocolate. We take the feathers and dunk them in our hot chocolate for just a moment, then try to eat them before they melt all over our fingers. We always end up covered in chocolate and we have to lick it all off. That's the best part.

Me and Julei are going to be best friends forever. She lets me style her sometimes when she comes over. She's so beautiful – she's the tallest in our class and she's thin and she has skin that is so pale that you can almost see through it. I love drawing on her face and hands with the sparkly paints Daddy gave me. I paint her nails and put her hair up lots of different ways, but she never lets me dye it, even though it would look really pretty. I would dye her hair all the different colours of a pastel rainbow and with her beautiful, pale skin no-one would be able to stop looking at her!

My hair is dyed a nice green colour, like the grass. I chose green because I thought it would help my skin not look so red and blotchy; green and red are opposite colours, we learnt about it in art class. I think it's worked a bit, but it's hard to know. When I'm old enough to dye my skin I'll be able to cover the red with beautiful patterns all over my body. I can't wait but Daddy says I'm not allowed to until I've left school.

When I get home I tell Daddy about Horatio and the boys and he says to ignore it. He called me his 'precious duckling' like always and he gives me some new nail polish. It's beautiful, it looks gold in the bottle, but when you paint it on, you see it's not just gold, it's also amber and bronze and ivory and all the colours in between. I paint my nails with it after dinner and spend a long time just staring at them, changing the light settings in my room to see how that makes the colours different. When I get into bed, Daddy comes to tuck me in.

"Goodnight, my precious duckling."

"Goodnight Daddy. Say goodnight to Mommy for me"

"I will. Sweet dreams Octavia."

He closes the door and I think a bit about Mommy. She stays in their room mostly, but sometimes I get to go in and see her if I can be quiet and still for a while. Before she used to do my hair up for me and teach me about what the next fashions were going to be, but now she just brushes my hair, or sometimes she looks at me for a long time while she holds my hand. Daddy says that when I was really little, Mommy used to go shopping and play games with me and see her friends like other Mommies do. But I think that made her get all tired out so now she has to rest quietly.

One day we learnt in school about some pills that make you have energy so you can go to parties all night and still be able to get up and go shopping the next day. I was so excited, I couldn't wait to get home and tell Daddy. But he said the pills weren't right for Mommy's kind of tired and I shouldn't mention it to her in case it made her feel upset. He said it was a nice idea though.

Thinking about Mommy gives me a feeling that's sort of like being twisted up inside my tummy, so I think about Daddy instead. As I fall asleep, I wonder why he calls me his duckling. I think I would prefer to be called a swan. I must tell him that tomorrow. I dream I'm in charge of a flock of muttation ducks the size of people and I get them to chase Horatio around the playground quacking at him. That would serve him right.


	2. Chapter 2

**Octavia aged 13**

Today is my favourite day of the year, the Chariot rides for the Hunger Games! I am SOOOOOOOO excited! I wanted to go out to watch with the girls from school but Daddy said no way because we "made a spectacle of ourselves" at the Reaping yesterday. I didn't even go in the fountain, it was Zelina and Pentaya. It's SO unfair!

Daddy is always worrying about what other people think. I try to make him understand that if someone notices you it's ALWAYS good, but he's SO OLD and he doesn't get it. Before Mommy got sick, everyone used to notice her all the time, she was a FAMOUS MODEL and she was on TV and everything! Daddy didn't seem to mind that. If she was well enough, she would talk to him and make him let me go.

He just doesn't get what a BIG DEAL it is that Zelina invited me to go with them. Zelina is, like, THE most popular girl in school and she never normally talks to me, but the other day the teacher made us partners in Skin Design Class and she REALLY liked the Hummingbird I drew on her shoulder! She said I should be a stylist for the GAMES when I'm older! IMAGINE! And THEN she invited me to watch the Reaping with her and Pentaya and Olive and all the other popular girls. She even said Julei could come too!

I BET Julei goes without me today. She'll probably end up being best friends with Olive and I'll be on my own. Olive and Varnia aren't speaking any more because Varnia kissed…TUNGSTEN! (ew, he might be 16 but he's not at ALL hot). Olive was teasing her and then Varnia said Olive was LAME because she hasn't ever kissed anyone and then Olive said Varnia was easy because she kisses EVERYONE and then Varnia got out her laser and burned a big black splodge right on Olive's forearm where she has a temporary tattoo of a kitten! Olive was SO UPSET because it was a picture of her kitten who got run over by a taxi-shuttle in November.

I can't BELIEVE I'm going to be left out. Daddy is SO annoying. I'll have to holocall Julei and make sure she says nice things about me, and tells them a good story about why I couldn't go. Maybe she could say that some of Mommy's old model friends are taking me out and I tried to get out of it but they got so upset that I couldn't say no. Some of her friends did use to come and visit, and they did take me out sometimes, but they haven't been for AGES. They were always nice to me but once when I was 10 I heard two of them talking about "what a shame" it is that I've "inherited my looks from Daddy".

I was SO upset when I heard them say that, I cried for HOURS. Daddy came in to my room and found me and he gave me a big hug. He said something stupid about beauty being on the inside (yeah, like my guts are really pretty or something…) but then he said that ever since I was tiny I had lots of ideas about how to make people and things MORE beautiful! So he said that I CAN make the world more beautiful, even if it's not through how I look.

So I practice MAKING beauty, with hairstyles and make-up and paints and stuff. I try and use my imagination to make the best of myself too. I know I'm not pretty, and I'm TOO FAT, but I wear lots of stiff, shiny materials to make me look taller and thinner. Green is my favourite colour and I LOVE the sea-green colour my hair is at the moment – I had it treated to take the frizz out and now it's long and curly! Most days I match it with silver-green make-up on my face and hands and feet.

I look…OK.

It does get to me sometimes because BEING beautiful is the most important thing there is. It's how you get friends, and boyfriends, and fame and money and EVERYTHING!

That's why I love the Chariot Rides more than any other bit of the Hunger Games! It's the first time you get to see how the designers and the stylists have used their imaginations to COMPLETELY transform the boys and girls from the Districts, where they don't have ANYTHING beautiful (except maybe in District 1 where jewels and stuff come from, but they don't get to keep them). It must make the people in the Districts SO happy to see their children finally being noticed and making a difference! I'd LOVE to see the parents' proud faces when they see them on the TV but they never show their reactions.

That's when I pick my tribute every year, at the Chariot Ride. Some of my friends pick at the Reaping, by seeing who doesn't cry, or if someone volunteers, or if they look REALLY strong. Julei always picks at the Interviews, she says you can tell by their answers whether someone has the "will to win" or something like that. Her tribute WON last year! But I like to pick the one who takes my breath away with their beauty.

My tribute has NEVER won! They often do quite well because they get lots of sponsors, but so far they haven't ended up as Victor. It's still fun in classes though, when we're designing looks based on the tributes we've chosen, and making banners to support them and things like that. I'm ALWAYS glad with my choice. I would HATE their beauty to go unnoticed!

I watch most of the rest of the Hunger Games from behind my hands because it is just TOO exciting and scary! Sometimes when my tribute dies it makes me cry, especially if it's a messy death.

One year, I would love a REALLY beautiful tribute to win – the one I pick of course! I would have a MASSIVE celebration, and invite Zelina, and I would MAKE Daddy take me to see the post-Games interview, and we would sit RIGHT at the front and I would wear something I'd made in school based from their styling, and they would look at me and notice me and KNOW I was special!

Because I AM special. Just not to look at.


End file.
